Development projects in Odisha’s Rourkela hit land hurdle
ROURKELA: Amid acute shortage of encroachment-free government land, implementation of development projects remains a major concern for Rourkela Smart City Limited and other stakeholders even as hundreds of acres of land continue to be illegally occupied by slums.
Blame it on lack of coordination and failure of the Central and state governments to implement an affordable housing scheme for slum dwellers, little is left with RSCL to implement its projects. Sources said only one affordable housing project of Rourkela Development Authority (RDA) under the state government’s ‘Policy for Housing for All in Urban Areas, Odisha, 2015’ has been completed in the last seven years. But no slum dweller has been accommodated in the project yet.
The project with barely 500 EWS (economically weaker section) housing units at Chhend Colony is like a drop in the ocean. Another such proposal of RDA which envisages building 720 EWS units along with AHP-1 and AHP-2 of Rourkela Municipal Corporation (RMC) under Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana – Urban (PMAY-U) with combined capacity of 1,600 EWS units has failed to take off. A decade back, RMC had earmarked 36 acre land at Madhusudanpali for rehabilitating around 4,900 families in low-cost housing units only to shun it later.
As per 2011 census, RMC’s territorial jurisdiction has 132 slums comprising 40,480 households with a population of 1,64,860. Recently, the civic body de-listed 86 slums with around 30,000 households on occupied government land and after necessary development renamed them as Biju Adarsha Colonies. Simultaneously the occupants were made eligible for land rights under JAGA Mission.
However, no thought has been given to free bulk government land from illegal occupation for development projects. In a glaring example, the Rourkela Smart City Ltd on not finding suitable land hurriedly constructed a multi-level car parking (MLCP) at a cost of around Rs 50 crore adjacent to Birsa Munda multi-purpose stadium near Bisra Square. Due to faulty location of the MLCP, it has never been put to use after it was inaugurated 16 months back.
Rourkela MLA and former BJD Minister Sarada Prasad Nayak said as per the Revenue department around 400 acre of government land, 200 acre of Forest department land and 400 acre of South Eastern Railway (SER) in RMC’s territorial jurisdiction have been illegally occupied. He said in order to boost key infrastructure projects and city’s growth, there is urgent need to free encroached land for gainful use with rehabilitation of encroachers at designated locations. An integrated and holistic approach for setting up of adequate affordable housing projects is needed and SER and Rourkela Steel Plant (RSP) as leaseholders of government land should also chip in with land and resources for the purpose, Nayak said.
